russia has been backing assad diplomatically at the u.n. and has deep ties into assad's regime. if they begin to walk away from syria and there appear to be signals that they are distancing themselves, that will put pressure on those around assad to make sure that they do not take assad's lead in potentially using these weapons and helpses move towards the resolution of this. >> you have a ground strategy perhaps being considered and then you have an air strategy. air seems to be the one that's being discussed most because it can be most surgical. is there such a thing when we're talking about chemical weapons as being a surgical military option? >> there is not a clear surgical military it would take 75,000 troops to secure the sites that we know of, dropping ordinance on-sites that have sarin and even mustard gas and other nerve agents can be very damaging, get blown away in the wind. it's not clear this is surgical. the key thing is to ensure this country doesn't implode, that there's a managed transition, that assad has moved out in a manner that does latch up with the polit